Search engines are available that allow users to search through specialized sets of electronic documents/files, such as electronic movie content. These search engines that provide search functionality of specialized media documents are referred to herein as media content search engines. Media content search engines, such as the Internet Movie Database and Yahoo! Movies, provide databases of movies and movie information that are searchable using search terms, such as keywords found in a movie title, actor name, or director name. Such media content search engines are useful when a user knows something about the media content that they are attempting to locate.
When a keyword is known, a user may enter the keyword in the search engine, which will match media content items in the media content database and return search results. In conventional media content search engines, the search results are typically ranked by search matching score. If a searched keyword is a general term or a term marginally related to the media content, the user may be presented with a list of largely irrelevant search results.
Some conventional media search engines, including the Internet Movie Database, present search results together with lists of links to related media content. Such related media content includes, for example, lists of links to information about actors appearing in a movie and to other recommended movies. However, the determination of such lists of links to related media content does not account for the relevance of the related media content to the user's search and are not ranked in a meaningful way. The list of links may include links to media content that the user deems irrelevant. In this scenario, a user may have to navigate through many unhelpful links, or may be unable to locate desired media content.